The present invention relates to a medicine supply apparatus for filling a given quantity of medicines specified by a prescription into a container (bag, vial, or the like) and supplying it in a hospital, a pharmacy, or the like.
In medical facilities such as hospitals, pharmacies, or the like, a medicine supply apparatus (tablet packing machine) as described in JP-Y-S57-5282 has been conventionally used to offer medicines prescribed by a doctor to a patient. In such an apparatus, the medicines (tablets, capsules, or the like) in the quantity described in a prescription (prescription data) are discharged from a discharge drum (alignment board) in a tablet case one by one, then collected by a hopper via a chute, and then packed per dose by packing paper, or filled into a vial.
On the other hand, the medicine supply apparatus is provided with a feeder called a UTC for those medicines that are not prepared very often or that are packed in addition to medicines from a tablet case. The feeder does not discharge medicines from a tablet case and can receive medicines that are voluntarily introduced thereinto. The feeder is provided with a plurality of reception compartments into which medicines can be voluntarily fed by a user, and is configured such that the respective reception compartments are rotatable by the use of a belt.
Then, based on the foregoing prescription data, a reception compartment containing medicines to be packed is moved by the belt to a position where a shutter is located, then the shutter is opened so that the medicines in the subject reception compartment are discharged into the foregoing hopper. However, there has been a drawback that, upon feeding medicines into a reception compartment, it is difficult for a user to grasp which of the reception compartments the medicines should be thrown into. There has also been a problem that if the medicines are put into wrong reception compartments, the medicines are resultantly packed according to a wrong prescription.